Present day telephony voice networks, have a network built around circuit switches, end offices, a toll network, tandem switches, and twisted wires. These voice networks are referred to as a public switched telephone network (PSTN) or plain old telephone service (POTS). Due to bandwidth limitations of plain old telephone service (POTS), there is an inherent inability to efficiently integrate multiple types of media such as telephony, data communication for personal computers (PC), and television (TV) broadcasts. Accordingly, a new broadband architecture is required. This new architecture gives rise to a new array of user services.
There is also a need to provide improved flexible billing plans in a telephony network. For instance, telephony service providers may wish to provide subscribers with unique telephone rate plans based on the user's most frequented calls or based on the subscribers' preferences. While conventional telephony systems offer customized billing plans, they are often of limited practical use because they are typically not dynamically flexible. It would be desirable to be able to be able to select between different billing plans on the fly, as well as to have the billing plans automatically adjust to changing circumstances.
It would also be desirable to provide subscribers with the ability to contact one or more particular other subscribers in a more direct way than via a conventional phone call, such as via intercom-like communication. While conventional telephony systems offer dedicated links such as dedicated T1 links between parties, such dedicated links are expensive and require that a large amount of bandwidth be reserved for use any time by the parties leasing the T1 links. It would be more efficient to be able to provide such direct linking between subscribers without having to pre-reserve a physical link and/or network bandwidth.